Itsa Wonderful Life!
by N64 Man
Summary: Mario meets "Its A Wonderful Life." To get you all in the Christmas spirit, ya know? R/R and enjoy.


"Itsa Wonderful Life!"  
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~*~A Mario Story~*~  
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Spoilers: Stuff from my other fics.  
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Disclaimer: Nothing. In fact, the plot even belongs to my sister... "Banana Hammock" is from "Scrubs", and I sort of got the idea for the Luigi scene from an episode of "Rugrats". But mine's better. You should know.  
A/N: Stars mean thought.  
Summary: Mario meets "It's a Wonderful Life", and it all blends together in some sort of delicious crazy smoothie. *Mm... smoothie..*  
Flurries of snow came down from the heavens in powdery white bursts. The sky was a slate blue gray, and gnarled trees stood up against the horizon, searching for stars.  
Mario leaned against the banister of the balcony, gripping the cold, hard marble until his knuckles turned white. He inhaled sadly through his nose, breathing in the smell of burning blueberry pie.  
And ooh... was that cinnamon?   
The depressing music from a cello floated up to him from some hidden corner. He recognized it as "Yesterday". A burst of wind cut through the thin linen of his overalls.   
*Damn cheap pants.*  
The pie factory churned out clouds of sullen gray smoke, which rid on the wind up to the second story balcony.  
*Damn pies. Who actually hires someone to make and prepackage pies? I hate pies.*   
Mario peered down to the ground below him, a lone cello player practicing in the courtyard.   
*I hate cellos. Must remind cello player this is my property and to stay off, and take your Liverpuddlian tunes with them. Oh wait. Don't own land. Luigi owns land. Luigi bought land with profits from pie factory. Only choice is to body slam cello player. Yes... yes... that works fine. Wonder how big a splat I would make. Wait. Probably would not live to see splat. Therein lies the problem. How can I kill cello player if I won't be around to enjoy silence? Meh. Here goes nothing...*  
  
He took a deep breath, stood back, and prepared to--  
  
"Mario! No!" cried a floating beam of light.   
  
"Sod off, you oversized snow-flake."  
  
"Yogurt eating gnome," Mario muttered under his breath.   
  
"Haven't you realized how much you've got to live for?"  
  
"Prepackaged pies?"  
  
"No! Friends, family..."  
  
"Meh."  
  
"No! Something more! Look at all you have! A mansion, a shiny truck, a pool, your very own tennis court, heck! Even the pie factory!"  
  
"Luigi owns all that. Which reminds me, I hate the economy."  
  
"You must have *something* to live for!"  
  
"Like doorknobs?"  
  
"Yeah! Like... No, wait, that's not right."  
  
"Banana hammocks. I hear they're gonna be big."  
  
The floating beam of light shook it's head. It lost it shimmer, and Mario saw that once the glow had worn off, it was really just a winged toadstool. With really big eyes. And a unibrow  
  
"Mario, do you know who I am?"  
  
"The muffin man?"  
  
"Your guardian angel, smart one!"   
  
"Why does God curse me with all the ugly angels? And you don't even have any muffins!" Mario threw up his hands in muffin-less agony.  
  
"Listen... I'm going to show you what life would be like if you had never existed."  
  
"Well, I suppose the toilet would still be clogged..."  
  
"Not a real bright one, are ya, pal?" The Angel raised half of an eyebrow. "Close your eyes... this may sting a bit."  
  
Mario felt a gust of wind, more powerful then anything he'd ever felt before. The ground fell out from under him. Everything lost it's shape and definition, it was just blurs. Faster and faster, until it was only gray. His foot somehow ended up tucked behind his ear. He fell to the ground with a sickening thud. Little pies with doorknobs on them danced around his head.  
  
Mario cautiously open an eye.   
  
"Well?"  
  
"M-my house. This is my house..." He'd recognize the familiar cowboy wallpaper of the bathroom anywhere. There was only one towel though, not two. And it was bright green. Mario could hear Luigi talking to someone in the living room.   
  
"Maude! I love the lipstick! Where'd you get it? You have great skin for makeup!"  
  
*Well he seems to be getting along fine without me* Mario thought to himself.  
  
"Uh huh. Uh huh." Luigi laughed at something. "I do wish you'd bring friends over more often. It gets so lonely. You know there are only about 5 of us here at home. I must do Bowser's laundry more often! Aw, you're such a nice bunch. Love the hairstyle, Bernard! How'd the surgery go, Mable? Darn. They didn't use anesthetic again? Even after I asked them? A seamstress! I asked for a surgeon!"  
  
"It's okay. You can see him if you want," said the Angel.  
  
Perhaps that was a bad suggestion. Luigi was standing around in his underwear talking to a bunch of socks, lined up on the couch. There were about thirty or so.   
  
"Why don't you ever eat my pizza? Do you not like my pizza!? EAT THE PIZZA!" yelled Luigi, smearing a slice against a fluffy cashmere sock. "Stupid ungrateful Bernard. I NEVER LIKED YOUR HAIRSTYLE! IT'S RIDICULOUSLY UNFLATTERING!"  
  
"Oh... my... God..." gasped Mario. "Luigi! Put on some frikken pants!"  
  
"He can't hear you, dear friend. He can't hear you." The toadstool sympathetically put an arm around Mario's shoulder. "You see, without you, he has no one to talk to. There was no inspiration to found a pie factory. He was forced to do Bowser's laundry at five coins per hour, only to buy pizza for socks who would not eat."  
  
"That's so sad."  
  
"Remember when you got mad at him for talking to that pair of pants he was ironing? And you threw a pie at him cuz you were angry? It caused him to think about which path he would choose. The clothes whisperer or pie prodigy."  
  
Mario nodded sadly.  
  
"That's when he knew what he was destined to become."  
  
"Can we go somewhere else now?" Mario whispered.  
  
"How about Peach?" The Angel snapped his fingers, and they were at the castle gates. Huge pillars of jagged stone stuck out of pits of lava. A single, rickety bridge stood between the normal Mushroom Kingdom and the castle. The bridge was made with the bones of a thousand fluffy kitties who had angered the Great Bowser for no apparent reason. The castle loomed angrily over smoking pits of lava.  
  
"Well, she's certainly remodeled," shrugged Mario, who slowly stepped across the bridge.  
  
"Another raisin, my sweet?" Bowser said with a toothy grin.  
  
"Yes please," cooed the blonde haired woman, almost sitting on his lap. She smoothed out her pink satin dress.  
  
"Is that...?" Mario trailed off.  
  
"Yeah. Bowser came, captured the kingdom, and no one bothered to get it back. Peach figured 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."  
  
"Dance Koopa! Dance!" Peach screeched, throwing a bottle of Diet Mushroom Cola at the poor Koopa. It was wearing a ridiculous outfit, multicolored and skin tight. It's tap-dancing shoes were just about worn through due to constant dancing.  
  
"Dance you Koopa! Or to the stocks with ye!" Bowser roared over the laughing of the crowd.  
  
"Please sir, it's hard to dance with these chains around my feet... Perhaps you could remove them? Sir?" it pleaded.  
  
"Well that solves the mystery of what happened to Koopa the Quick," Mario pointed out.  
  
"No matter how fast Koopa could run, he was not to be outdone by Bowser's high powered rocket chair," said the Angel, shaking his head. "This is his penance"  
  
"You asked for it, you miserable turtle!" yelled Bowser, flinging a spoonful of hot sauce at Koopa's eyes.  
  
"It burns! It burns worse then holy water on Bowser's back on a Sunday Morning!" spat the victim.  
  
"Off with his head!" Peach said, leaping up and gathering her Chopping Knife.  
  
"I couldn't have said it better myself, dear."  
  
Mario rolled up his sleeves, ready to show Bowser how public humiliation was really done. Mario lunged at Bowser, but since it was only an apparition, Mario went right through him and into the boiling pit of lava, apparently much more then a hallucination.  
  
Luckily, his Guardian Angel saved him just in time.  
  
"It's what we're here for," he shrugged.  
  
"Can we go somewhere else? This is making me sad."  
  
"How 'bout we check on Luigi's girlfriend Daisy."  
  
There was a puff of smoke, and they appeared at a fancy French restaurant. Harpists, French waiters, pouffy hats... the whole nine yards.  
  
A well-groomed man, wearing a tux with slicked back hair held Daisy's hand. They were both laughing.  
  
"She looks happy enough," Mario commented. "Wait... I recognize him from when Pierre Puanteur hit the town. That's Crazy Man Joe! And he's not rambling about Armadillos anymore!"  
  
"You were never around to accidentally torch his house."  
  
"Yes ... accidentally..." Mario repeated, sounding unsure.  
  
"So he's still 100 percent sane. He's even engaged to Daisy."  
  
"What about Luigi?"  
  
"Luigi has his socks," the Angel said grimly.  
  
"Isn't that the cello player?" His voice hinted anger.  
  
"Well he's a harpist now. He just became a cello player so he could annoy you."  
  
"Why that rotten son of an elephant!" Mario got ready to stomp on the no-good musician's head.  
  
"Don't even bother."  
  
"What's good ol' Toad up to?"  
  
"Mario..." the Angel turned to face his companion. "What you see may surprise you, shock you, even frighten you. Viewer discretion is advised."  
  
This time they appeared at an auto mat. It smelled like oil, and likewise, there were oil stains all over the floor. Little toads lifted cars on their shoulders and carried them from where they had crapped out back to the garage, to breathe life into them again.  
  
"Faster! Faster, you good for nothin' little workers!" Toad chased after the smaller mushrooms, brandishing a whip.   
  
"We're running as fast as we can!"  
  
"Excuse me, I brought my car in a few weeks ago to have the oil changed, and uh, I haven't gotten it back yet. Your advertisement said just like fast food... 'Fast, Easy, and Cheap.' Well, you billed me a ridiculous amount of money for---"  
  
"I haven't gotten around to it yet. You think the other cars fix themselves? Huh?" Toad spit tobacco and rubbed the stubble on his chin. He pointed to a shiny red car on the other side of the garage.  
  
"You like that car?"  
  
"That car has no steering wheel."  
  
"Eh, whatcha gonna do? Take it. Lets say, oh, 5, 6 grand?"  
  
"It looks like the breaks are cut."  
  
"It's a very nice car, Mr. Donatelli. It's a very shiny car. It's a pimp car, Mr. Donatelli."  
  
"I don't know if my wife would approve..."  
  
"Listen, I have a pimp hat lying around... and if the pimp hat got thrown into the deal somewhere, would you buy the car then?" It suddenly occurred to Mario that Toad had never had a Brooklyn accent before. He did now, apparently.  
  
"I guess so, yeah."  
  
"Wonderful. Get out your checkbook."  
  
"Take me home, Angel. I don't wanna see anymore."  
  
"There's one more place I think we should go."  
  
They appeared in a nursery. A dozen baby screamed loudly, and the air was thick with the scent of baby powder. The walls were light pink. Tony Hawk was juggling a box of diapers, some bottles of warm milk, and a pacifier.  
  
"Is that... Tony Hawk?"  
  
"The one and only."  
  
"Why is he wearing an apron?"  
  
"You see, if 'Mario Pants Factory' hadn't come out in the 70s, then Tony wouldn't have been inspired to get off the couch and skateboard. And remember the $100 you lost so long ago? It fell through a hole in your pocket. Tony used it to buy his first skateboard. But you don't exist here. So he went to his second love, children. Not the bratty kindergarten ones, the cute, tiny ones."  
  
"So... I really altered the course of history there, didn't I?"  
  
"Very much so."  
  
"Take me home, Guardian Angel! I have wrongs to right! And invest in banana hammocks!"  
  
"Mario, are you okay?" Peach's high voice cut through the cold air. He was apparently lying on the ground, face down on the stone balcony.  
  
"Better then I've ever been!" he said excitedly. He jumped up, hugging Peach. "Don't ever marry Bowser."  
  
"Mario, what's going on?" Luigi asked.  
  
"Oh Luigi! I love it when you're fully clothed! But where are Maude, Mable and Bernard?"  
  
"I threw them out when I began the pie factory, why?"  
  
"Hang on. Is Crazy Man Joe still around?"  
  
Peach gave him a quizzical look. "Yeah, he came over for Christmas dinner."  
  
"Is he still engaged to Daisy? No matter..." Mario ran down to the castle banquet hall, skidded on the polished stone floor. "Hello Joe! How's the straight jacket, not too tight, I hope?"  
  
"You burned down my house and now I want revenge! Revenge like the rabid armadillo eating a dead Conquistador!"  
  
"I love you too!" He rushed out to the courtyard. "Hello cello player! Keep up the good work! You'll make it to the Olympics one day!"  
  
"Excuse me?" she asked.  
  
"Mario, what's gotten into you?" asked Peach, having followed him down. At her tail was Luigi.  
  
"Nothing, nothing... I'm just so happy to have pies."  
  
"Mario, you're allergic to pies."  
  
"Banana Hammock... Banana Hammock one and all."  
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The End  
What'd you think? Please, R&R!   
Happy Holidays from N64 man and Midnight_Raine 


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